Dear Friend of the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development,
Welcome to the latest issue of the OICSD newsletter featuring updates on our research, scholarships and seminars.
On behalf of the OICSD community, we wish you a very happy new year! 2023 was a special year for us as we marked an incredible decade of our founding, witnessing the centre’s growth in building a discourse on sustainability and India. What started with three postgraduate scholarships in 2013 for talented applicants from India has grown into ten scholarships this year and an alumni base of over 50 scholars working on these important issues.
As we continue the academic year of 2023-24 alongside the new year, we are set to mark the beginning of another decade – with the goal to further our objective to conduct interdisciplinary research, continue supporting Indian applicants in their ambition to come to Oxford, and build the bridge from research to impact. In this edition we share news on our research and events, new doctorates, recap of our recent India trip, and showcasing scholars working on OICSD’s objectives in their professional journey.
OICSD Research Select Highlights
OICSD Research Director Prof Radhika Khosla is lead author of the new UN spotlight report released at the recently concluded COP28 on the opportunity from rising unprecedented cooling energy emissions.
The Global Cooling Watch 2023 report demonstrates pathways to achieve near zero emissions from cooling and provides a pathways for action for countries, including being the basis for the Global Cooling Pledge which over 60 countries signed at COP28. Prof Khosla summaries the report here.
DPhil scholar Snigdha Lal’s research on the emergence of perovskites as materials for efficient solar cells was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry, where she shows
how the non-toxic lead-free perovskite inspired materials still lag behind lead halide perovskites.
DPhil scholar Divya Choudhary’s research on anti-bacterial response is published in the latest edition of Cellular Biology. The paper, Chaos in a bacterial stress response,
analyses the role of chaos in cell biology, particularly the heterogeneous response of Escherichia coli cells to oxidative stress.
DPhil scholar Swapnil Tripathi authored the report on India in the 2022 Global Review of Constitutional Law. Prior to this, he co-authored the India report for the 2021 edition. Both reports present an overview of the Constitutional law in India with a focus on latest cases.
OICSD Events Select Highlights
The third edition of the flagship Food Futures OpenAg symposium, a collaborative initiative between OICSD and UPL, took place on in October at Said Business School to
further the conversation on climate change and organic farming. The theme for this year was Enhancing Resilience: Delivering Lasting Change in Agriculture.
The symposium was inaugurated by Baroness Patricia Scotland, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth; Mr Vikram Shroff, Director at UPL and Mr Vikram Doraiswami, Indian High Commissioner. The keynote address was delivered by Helen Browning OBE.
Alongside three exciting panels, we hosted a feature presentation from Mr Aadith Moorthy, CEO of Boomitra –winner of 2023 Earthshot Climate prize and a conversation with Dr Tara Garnett, Director of TABLE – a collaborative platform based to discuss the future of food systems. Details are available here.
We hosted Mr Manuraj Shunmugasundaram who spoke about “Policies on Sustainability: Learning from Tamil Nadu” as the inaugural event of our Sustainability Series. He spoke about the public policy discourse in Tamil Nadu, particularly the local context of achieving various simultaneous Sustainable Development Goals. He spoke to some of our scholars and discussed his experiences as a lawyer.
We held our termly research showcase for Michaelmas 2023 with continuing DPhil Scholars on 22nd November. The presentations included research on anti-bacterial
resistance, studying misinformation on the internet, impact of climate change on birds, water policy, changing land use patterns, decolonisation of the legal system in India, and development of efficient solar batteries.
Postcard from India
We concluded our tenth-anniversary celebrations with a trip to India in December. Our Somerville College choir accompanied us and performed at St James’ Church in Delhi, the Bom Jesu Cathedral in Panjim and the NCPA in Mumbai as a tribute to the centre’s work and celebrating the legacy between India and Somerville College.
The visit was particularly special as the University’s new Vice Chancellor, Prof Irene Tracey joined us for her first trip to India since she took office in 2022. Her numerous engagements included a keynote on the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the University’s research priorities around AI, where she was joined by Prof John Tasioulas virtually. The event was hosted by Mr Cyril Shroff, Mrs Vandana Shroff and Somerville alumna Ms. Richa Roy, and Mr Shroff and Prof Tracey were featured at a CNBC interview.
It was also a chance to meet our cherished alumni, friends and partners. This included the Oxford and Cambridge Society of India who co-hosted a reception at St James Church in Delhi, the British Council and Magic Bus India Foundation in Delhi for hosting the choir for an interactive engagement. The success of this trip has been encouraging to plan the next decade!
Presenting our newest doctors!
Dr Sanghamitra Mukherjee – DPhil in Economics Dr Mukherjee joined the centre as the Indira Gandhi scholar in 2018. Her research analysed the constraints that hinder the adoption and effective usage of savings and loans amongst smallholder farmers in developing economies. She has now joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as an Economist in Washington DC.
Dr Aradhana Vadekkethil – DPhil in Law
Dr Vadekkethil joined the centre as a Cornelia Sorabji Scholar in 2017 to read for a BCL followed by an MPhil in Law in 2018 on the Somerville Alumni Award and then as the first Gopal Subramanian Scholarship for a DPhil in Law in 2019. Her research examined how rape adjudication works in India. Dr Vadekkethil is now the Lord and Lady McNair Early Career Fellow in Law at Somerville College, teaching Criminal Law and Constitutional Law.
In other news…
We collaborated with Eklavya India Foundation – an India based non-profit that provides mentorship to students from historically marginalised backgrounds. Neeraj Shetye, OICSD Partnerships and Communications manager conducted sessions at the workshop in Nagpur in December 2023.
Our collaboration with Oxford-based “Project EduAccess” continued for second year with an online workshop on OICSD scholarships. Project EduAccess is a non-profit initiative aimed at mentoring students from marginalised backgrounds from South Asia. Dr Siddharth Arora and scholars Medha Mukherjee, Fahad Zuberi, Niharika Singh, Isha Ahlawat presented.
Scholar-in-focus
A new vertical highlighting OICSD alumni scholars undertaking crucial research in the areas of sustainable development
Dr Vaanathi Sundaresan completed her DPhil in Biomedical Imaging at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences as an Indira Gandhi Scholar. She is now an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computational and Data Sciences (CDS), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. Before IISc, Vaanathi was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. Vaanathi is the only female faculty member at her department and one of the few in the institute. Her research is paving a path for more young researchers, particular women scientists in the field of neurosciences.
(on the left – Vaanathi with Dr Irene Tracey, Vice Chancellor, University of Oxford during the Mumbai leg of OICSD’s India tour in December 2023)
A new vertical highlighting OICSD alumni scholars undertaking crucial research in
the areas of sustainable development She has been recently awarded Department of biotechnology (DBT)-Wellcome Trust India Alliance Early Career Fellowship where she is now the Principal Investigator for “Development and evaluation of Imaging-based biomarkers for quantitative assessment of Vascular Cognitive Impairment using Artificial Intelligence”. She has also been awarded the Young Investigator Award (YIA) at Institute of Science (IISc) by Pratiksha Trust, Bangalore, which recognises high performing, early-career Assistant Professors.
Support the OICSD
The OICSD is supported by a network of philanthropists in India and the UK, who have enabled us to double the number of postgraduate scholarships we offer to talented Indian students. If you would like to support our mission of education and research that benefits India and the world, the Oxford India Foundation (Section 8 registered non-profit) gives donors based in India a new and tax-efficient way to support the activities of the OICSD.
For more information about making a gift to support the Centre, please contact our Director of Development Sara Kalim at: sara.kalim@some.ox.ac.uk.
For regular updates on our research and events, we invite you to follow us on Twitter: @OxIndiaCentre
Our mailing address is:
OICSD, Somerville College, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6HD
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